


Finding my way again

by honeywreath



Category: Phandom/The Fantastic Foursome (YouTube RPF)
Genre: Depression, Eating Disorders, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Mental Health Issues, based on personal expreiences so might not be accurate for anyone else, reposted from my old deleted account p-hantasticpheels, self hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 10:10:49
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18050519
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/honeywreath/pseuds/honeywreath
Summary: He’s just tired.





	Finding my way again

**Author's Note:**

> Tw: written from perspective of person with  mental health issues and self hatred.

Phil is tired.

He’s been tired for days now, weeks, if he amounts the days to that. At this point, he can’t be sure if it’s appropriate to call it post-tour lag anymore. Their calendar insists that the tour’s been done for months. Their shiny golden jackets they hang untouched in the closet, dusty and untouched.

In conclusion, Phi’s _pretty_ sure he can’t use the after slump as an excuse.

Not for any longer than he already has.

He’s a bit wary of his own inability to just click back into place a little. If anything his insides seem to be crumbling more and more, crumb by crumb, chip by chip.

This niggling is of how his shoulders slump lower now and how this new sort of laziness hinders his ability to make rational decisions sometimes, but nothing too alarming, so he does what he’s always done with things that concern his own well being and represses it.

He avoids going to the doctor’s _,_ that stubborn pool of anxiety like a permanent bubbling cauldron of doubt in his stomach.

It’s not something to bother a doctor with who has actual dying people to cater to.

It's harmless, nothing but Phil being a bit put off and he can usually brave the storm till he either drives it away or collapses in the process, he can recover when the flu fully hits, ride it out with Dan fretting over him like a mother hen and feeding him liquid nutrients.

To his surprise, neither happens.

He’s just tired.

He's very, very tired and numb and the numbness is what he chalks up to being tired again so sometimes he makes an extra cup of coffee willing it to work it’s magic even if temporarily and sometimes to Dan’s surprise cuts out caffeine all together.

When he inquires if Phil’s _okay_ with a raised brow he replies that he’s trying to be healthier and Dan nods with a tug on his running shoes before he leaves because Dan’s trying too and that’s all one can really do.

Still, this heaviness come out of literally nowhere, it creeps in so silently and effortlessly that Phil doesn't even notice it settle, wonders if he’s always had a limping shadow companion hanging by his shoulder and whispering in his ears in jumbles of words that mean no sense as they run each other over.

All Phil is left with afterwards is a constant buzz of white noise washing out everything else.

Like a spill of lead in his blood.

It's heavy.

He feels so heavy.

He smiles and he laughs while he aches inside, a thrum under his skin consistent but slow as if a part of his pulse, a part of his being.

It’s easy to accept and embrace after it’s apparent that this is one lethargy that won’t go away with just a nap. It doesn’t hinder answering emails or filming videos and cuddling Dan till he sleeps. It isn't a liability. It's nothing he needs to give another thought to.

It _isn't_.

It isn't, until Phil twists himself out of the warm soft arms, wrenching himself away from a warmth he can't imagine sleeping without to go and forgo sleep all together and work without making a fuss because he _needs_ to be occupied and if that is all he needs to pry off this alien clutch on his brain it’s manageable.

He just needs a distraction from it all.

The heaviness. The emptiness.

_Emptiness?_

The word echos.

* * *

 

Phil didn’t think much of being tired for the first month.

If he did, he pretends he didn't.

Not then.

Now, as the fatigue weighs down on him like a boulder on his back, jagged edges jabbed into his spine he gives in and tries all his mum’s pre-flu home remedies.

When they fail to perk his spirit up, he tries all the leftover, unhealthy coping mechanisms that seem to be repulsive to his body but a need for his mind.

Dan is caught off guard with his sudden day napping and night owl situation. It's the first time in all these years that he's the one mumbling about the time and switching his devices off, giving the clock and then Phil a worried glance when he leaves. Phil pretends not to notice it, hiding behind his large framed glasses and tablet.

It doesn't end the first night or the next.

Dan makes no interrogation other than a few questions about if he’s okay, pressing his large warm hands into Phil's shoulder blades and rubbing in lovely long strong strokes and Phil’s thirty years old not five, he can mix up his schedule a bit if need be.

He doesn’t say that to Dan, doesn’t snap at him when he’s nothing but caring. He just bites back the anger, the sadness and the frustration that rise suddenly and without his control.

He smiles and gives an affirmative when Dan asks if he’s doing okay again the sixth day, with that frown on his forehead and pinch between his beautiful brown eyes because Phil needs them both to believe him, believe that yes, he’s okay.

He’s okay, he’s just tired.

It’s nothing dramatic.

* * *

 

The tiredness persists.

It spreads out in his skin and latches, feeds on his sanity for days upon days till he loses count.

Sometimes it’s in tightness behind his eyes, cloudiness in his head and lethargy in his limbs.

Sometimes it’s how he falls asleep sitting up, five minutes into a new episode of Game of Thrones and Dan doesn’t do what he would have a month, no two, ago. He doesn't lean toward Phil, doesn't burrow into his neck and leave wet kisses, peck and slobber his jaw till he wakes up laughing and smacking him away.

Dan just pauses the video.

He kisses his forehead quietly, gently, carefully and covers him with a blanket to let him sleep.

Dan’s hands shake slightly as he does but he’s relived every time something manages to lull Phil to sleep, to make him rest.

Dan’s more vocal about asking now, his questions rhetorical when he asks if Phil’s okay, angry at Phil’s dismissal. The sort of angry Phil can easily run his fingers through and get entangled in the threads that whisper scared.

Dan's just so fucking scared and Phil knows it but he lashes out because Phil is a bit not good inside. It's how he feels, he acts and even reacts, as guilty as it makes him feel.

Phil insists on being alright.

He insists and he’s got the _‘I’m older and I know better’_ card even when he knows how unfair it is to use it, but it’s in his front pocket like a shield, fingers slipping against its edges every time the wariness in Dan’s gaze grows and every time he pushes for Phil to open up even a little bit because Phil’s scared too, he’s scared of talking about this thing he doesn’t understand and he wants to roll up like a hedgehog, spikes around so no one can touch him.

Not even that one person he trusts because he can’t even trust himself these days.

No one can see what he’s doing to himself because he can’t stop, he doesn't know what and how and it feels like he’s a whole other person. It feels like he’s watching himself from outside his own body and it terrifies him.

It’s easier to hide behind the fact that _He’s a grown adult_ and _he can change his sleeping schedule if he likes without Dan’s fretting_ if it doesn’t hinder work and Dan gives him that bitten lipped, concerned glance on occasion and Phil pretends he doesn’t know what it means.

He pretends he doesn’t see Dan flinch every time he pushes him away with his silence, with invisible walls that have never been there in between them, pretends that he can’t see the hurt in his eyes, the constant shaking of his hands.

Phil wants to reach out and hold them, cradle them, kiss them and clench them in his own till they feel real, till he feels real and he wants to reach for them badly.

He wants to, but he’s not sure if he’s welcome anymore, not sure if he can allow himself that mercy even if Dan grants it.

The naps turn into bouts of sleep and wakefulness and sometimes no sleep at all.

He leaves for the store to buy a concealer for under his eyes before they play Mario cart for the gaming channel one Thursday afternoon.

Dan hesitates just a moment before he finally says it, this time ignoring the pleading in Phil’s eyes.

‘I think maybe we should go to the doctor’s Phil, help you sleep better-‘

But Phil cuts him off _because it’s nothing Dan, just a result of bad habits and one too many late night Wikipedia quests, and he’ll jump right back on track anytime he wants to_.

What he doesn’t say is how the nausea, the sick heaviness in his body doesn’t leave no matter how much he sleeps so he holds his head in his hand and wonders what it was ever like to feel one hundred percent fresh and functional, what it was like to feel at home in his own life, in his own body, in his own mind.

What it felt like to feel anything but numb.

* * *

 

Numb is the word he comes up with every time he reaches in to try and find himself but empty seems more appropriate and here in his comfy home with his wonderful, gorgeous boyfriend and a job that he is supposed to love, Phil feels so fucking ungrateful.

He doesn’t know what’s gotten into him and why he doesn’t want to leave the bed even if he gets no sleep in said bed and why he wants to shut the world out.

Shut _Dan out ._

That scares him the most but it’s insistent and relentless, clawing at his guts in a rabid frenzy of _rip, rip, rip_ and Phil’s the same but he’s not and he bants and he laughs but he aches and it’s a part of his pulse.

It thumps, thumps, thumps in his chest like it’s a part of him, himself, if he can figure out who he himself even is.

* * *

 

Dan jokes if he’s having a rather late mid life crisis one day.

Phil's been sitting there a while, seemingly lost in his thoughts, glasses fogged up with the steam from the mug in his hands that’s getting to a less and less drinkable temperature in real time.

They’ve had a good morning today.

Some days feel good even if rarely and Phil has wanted to cling to it but he slips back down so easy, too easy.

Phil fails to find the energy to lift the neglected drink to his lips and he just sets it down, glad Dan can’t see his eyes because he doesn’t know _what_ he’ll see in them.

Phil himself can’t decipher it.

 _He’s too scared to decipher it_.

Dan leans in a dopey smile on his face, fond and pink and droopy in a way Phil knows is to pluck the glasses straight off his nose and wipe them with his shirt before setting them back up on their perch with a kiss to his cheek, maybe kiss up to his forehead and back down onto the tip of his nose.

Dan's so sweet like that.

Usually, Phil’s endeared endlessly by it. Makes him feel a little bashful but mostly loved, cared for and it fills him with warmth.

It does, it always has but he flinches then.

He flinches and stands up so abruptly that he almost knocks into Dan's head with a half-assed excuse of how they need milk _and that he needs space, he can’t breathe and he needs space_ but he doesn’t say the latter because it’s not Dan he needs space from, it’s something inside him and no matter how long Phil walks in the frigid autumn air it doesn’t cool the fever in his blood.

The door's smacked behind him loudly but he hadn't noticed over the rush in his ears.

Phil’s hot all over but he’s still so cold.

_So, so fucking cold._

_He needs to keep walking._

It'll help him warm up.

So, He walks.

* * *

 

Dan tells him quietly that they have two cartons of milk untouched from yesterday’s delivery when he comes back home hours later, half frozen without really registering it, haggard stead and glazed eyes.

Dan tells him that but doesn’t ask why Phil came in empty handed, doesn’t hold him close, cradle and warm him up in his chest like he does when Phil usually comes in from bracing the cold out-there.

He stands passive in posture, hip by the counter and body bent like a careful attendant of skittish animals, bent into a slight hunch as If to make himself small and less of a threat.

He looks afraid of scaring Phil. 

It's an insane thought but it is what it is and he really _is_ afraid, frightened half to death of what Phil’s been doing to himself and them.

Himself and Dan too because when you love someone and they love you back you never ever get hurt alone.

Phil’s a knife driving deeper in to Dan’s chest every time he falls further and right now that makes Phil want to disappear.

He wants to spare Dan of _this_ , of this shell of a person he’s becoming.

He feels like he’s wearing masks, he feels like he’s lying with every grin and every single positive emotion because it trickles down a nip in his heart till he’s _hollow, hollow, hollow_ and he floats outside his body watching himself do all the things he’s supposed to do.

He walks out and Dan is like a chipped tea cup he keeps sipping from, letting his lip bleed without notice and each time the chip cracks more and more and till the teacup breaks.

He won't be the reason for Dan to chip away.

He can pull his lip in and let it fill his own mouth.

* * *

 

It's 11 am when Phil notes in an empty sort of way that he feels queasy and lowers the brightness of his laptop.

_Detachment._

_Depression._

The words scream at him, haunting and judgmental.

He shuts the lid gently but immediately because it's too bright even after he's lowered the brightness and he might be getting a headache and he’s not fucking  _depressed_.

He’s got no reason to be and yes he might not feel as energetic as he used to but he’s already thirty and he’s aging and he can’t feel eighteen forever _and he’s thrity and he’s aging and it’s normal and he’s fine, fine, fine_ so  he pushes the _possibility_ down and wraps it in repression till no part peeks out.

He tapes it down less like a gift.

More so, traps the daunting idea, like putting chains on a monster you can't kill, a monster that haunts his nightmares and Phil would rather believe that he’s fine than accept that he’s not.

* * *

 

It’s a Saturday night.

Date night, because from their better days, that’s one among many routines they keep.

A symbol for holding each other precious, celebrating each other and what they have together again and again in all the ways they can and Phil finds changing out of his pajamas to be harrowing.

He changes.

He gets up and washes his face and shaves and changes because he’d do anything for Dan, anything but accept that there is something wrong and he wants Dan to be happy and _know_ that _nothing is wrong_ so he wears his best shirt and skinniest jeans even if they eat at his bones as soon as they lap over his skin.

He straightens his hair and laces his shoes, swapping glasses for contacts and giving himself a once over in the mirror.

He deems it to be objectively fine but just standing dressed smartly consumes him and his eyes water with a sudden urge to sob.

He’s had a lid on his mood swings as soon as they erupted from the deep murky depths of him he didn’t know he had but tonight it’s all too much.

He doesn’t want to be there, here, now, and he’s angry at himself for feeling this way because he has no right to and Dan doesn’t deserve anything less than perfect but it’s a rising tide that drowns him then washes him ashore just to drown him again.

His skin crawls from beneath.

He wants to kick off his shoes, expensive date night shoes and tear off his new, corgi covered shirt as it rips with the buttons falling _plop, plop, plop._  

It's a shirt Dan bought as a present for him, a sentimental memory coated with affection, with heartfelt compliments and words like _‘it suits you so much Phil’ and ‘I thought of you when i saw this’,_ sprinkling of powdered sugar.

Phil wants to rip off _that_ shirt and clench his fingers in his hair to tear it out from the roots.

He wishes he could do all of that and disappear like a magician in his one final act of a breakdown, gone into nothingness where there’s no confusion or dread or just because there would be no Phil who can fuck up all that he loves because he’s becoming a fucking maniac.

He sits on his bed and takes a deep breath, palms pressed into his eyes.

Gathering all the energy he could possibly muster, he hauls himself up and opens his door, automatically tailing Dan to the kitchen because no matter how lost he feels in himself he can always find Dan in a heartbeat.

Sweet, sweet Dan who sits there waiting.

Ready to leave earlier than Phil for once, hair curled in soft waves that tumble to his forehead just above his doe brown eyes, soft chapped lips curving up as soon as he sees Phil and then down again when he _sees_ Phil, to Phil’s utmost despair.

Lately he's been wishing Dan wasn't so perceptive.

His own despair is one he registers faintly as he’s too far gone to even compute his own rueful emotion.

His hands tremble in a constant buzz that he can’t console so he smiles wide as if smiling for the both of them as he bends to taste Dan’s lips in a chaste peck.

‘Shall we go Mr. Howell? Our cab awaits.’

He says all posh and bantful because that’s who he wants to be for Dan tonight.

The humorous, light-hearted man Dan came to love.

He offers him his hand to pull him up off the chair and into a night Phil is afraid to confide in, in a place with more people and lights and life that he can handle and he’s so soulless right now, so dilute, he fears it’ll dissolve him.

Dan takes his hand, encased in his larger, warmer palm like Phil expects but contrary to expectation pulls Phil down to sit instead of getting up himself.

‘We can stay in tonight.’ He whispers, hands drawing soothing circles on Phil’s clammy skin and eyes asking all the questions his mouth doesn’t need to.

_Damn him and his eyes that can see all his naked secrets._

Phil disregards the concern, replies with an obviously fake smile that easily communicates how he wants Dan to ‘ _drop it for now’_

Phil wants to feel normal again, he’s desperate for it, wants to feel like he isn’t a dementor sucking the life away from his own boyfriend.

He ignores the niggling inside, that speck of common sense that begs him to talk it out, that reminds him how the pain etched so clearly in Dan’s pinched, frown won’t dissolve with a gulp of expensive wine and a bite of diverse delicacies but he chews and swallows all the words he doesn’t know how to say because _that’s_ the fucking problem isn’t it.

He doesn’t know.

He doesn’t know what he’ll say or what he’d tell Dan.

He doesn’t know which words to pick and which ones to drop because all of them seem rotten, moldy and infested and Dan’s way too precious to consume their poison.

It’s like being stuck in a child’s nightmare where nothing makes sense but everything is scary and you feel that fear inside you hoping you’d wake up but the difference is Phil can’t seem to wake up at all even when he’s awake, his head loopy all day and all night, he’s terrified of not what he’s becoming anymore.

He’s just afraid for Dan.

So, he pushes himself and pushes Dan in a conversation that flows smoothly and banter that comes easily with bumping hips and a taxi ride kiss. His voice goes high pitched and he giggles just a little too much until Dan’s sudden wave of silence gets too prolonged.

‘It’s just that, i feel like i’m on a date with AmazingPhil, not Phil Lester.’

Dan mumbles while he fidgets and plays with his untouched food, face contorted as if it hurts him to say the words and crush Phil’s heart but Phil doesn’t feel betrayed or hurt by the words.

He welcomes them, welcomes any semblance of himself as he just feels desperation to give all of himself back to Dan, any part, in anyway but he’s locked in a maze made of smog and it’s acidic birthplace has swallowed the keys.

He’s Phil but he’s not and he’s all of the people his mind has forgotten to be anymore.

Amazingphil is a part of him, always has been, someone stronger, louder, more confident and merrier, a magnifying glass over the parts of him that he likes and is comfortable sharing but Dan is right.

Amazingphil is not Phil Lester and Dan deserves to be on a date with the person he was promised but Phil _wishes_ he could feel like Phil Lester again.

They go to bed somberly that night, Dan’s guilt eating at his insides, heart hurting for saying what he said while Phil just hurts all over except within.

It’s like a barren land of nothingness till he almost slips into a semi-conscious state laying on soft sheets and Dan pulls him to his chest, spooning and cradling him like he’s something precious, something to be held like a treasure.

Phil doesn’t feel like a treasure though, he feels like an intruder in his own body, deceiving the one person he cares for just by being there, just by being with him and a deep stabbing pang in his stomach lets him know that the anguish has turned to sorrow because he feels all out of hope.

* * *

 

Phil tries another way then.

He tries to eat away the hole in his soul.

He eats and eats but then his appetite plummets.

He finds himself more than once eating in bouts then forgetting to eat at all for days.

He wretches and gags sometimes but then finds an empty stomach feels better. Nothing to add to the weight he’s already carrying.

Dan is there, a constant, watching him deteriorate while he argues that he’s _‘okay’_ and ‘ _can’t i skip a god damn meal if i want to!’_

The shame in snapping at Dan is less that he watches those plush lips skim to a straight line and that wide forehead wrinkle into a frown and more that he can’t let any apology slip past his tongue and he can’t go to hold Dan and beg for his forgiveness because he knows he’ll shatter into tiny sharp pieces that will pierce into everything they have left.

He’s one confession away from a breakdown.

His cheeks fall gaunt and hollow, his words drooping to slurs and stutters if he’s not careful with how he speaks and he pretends he doesn’t hear Dan’s muffled sniffs, doesn't find a wet pillow in the morning, doesn't hear his eyes pray to no one but Phil himself.

_‘Please, please let me help you. Let anybody help you Phil. You can’t keep whatever’s destroying you inside.’_

Phil googles it and it says depression among other things that don’t fit as right but he isn’t depressed, he’s got no right to be still he’s going to do something about it because Dan doesn’t deserve to live walking on egg shells around his boyfriend who has mood swings and grows detached for days and _looks fucking disgusting_ with his ribs poking out of his shirt.

Phil’s self loathing has grown to the point where he can’t look himself in the mirror.

He can’t stand Dan’s gentle touches and lovely warm affection because he’s not Phil Lester and he’s not Amazingphil and he’s sure as fuck not the man Dan fell in love with, at least not anymore.

He hasn’t called his mum in a month and hasn’t filmed a video in longer, emails to his brother short, curt and professional because any sort of social interaction feels like a noose around his throat, tight and taut as if he’ll hang himself on every word he says.

Every expression he fakes is another piece of soul astral projected into a black hole, endless gravity to keep him trapped.

He's caged in his own meat suit and it fucking sucks to exist.

* * *

 

Phil's fringe is long and flopping in to his eyes.

It's long passed it’s deadline for a cut, his chin worse, rugged, stubbly and unshaven in a way that Dan would’ve once begged him to keep, called it ‘sexy’ with a husky drop to his voice, but Phil wouldn’t know how he would feel now.

He’s been pushing Dan away for so long and so unfairly that he wonders how they still sleep in the same bed at night and why Dan still makes two cups of coffee not one, why he still keeps Phil’s share of food wrapped till it goes bad, why he still waits for Phil for anime in the morning when he knows Phil won’t come and why he’s still even there?

_How long will he even be there?_

That is one thought that hits him like a slap.

The thought of Dan ever leaving, even if Phil knows it’s better for him.

It goes through him like a spike to the chest and he’s selfish so fucking selfish with the need to hold on that he stands, stumbling, a knee jabbing into the table’s side but he doesn’t care for that then.

He doesn’t feel the little red mark on his leg because the other feeling, the dread of losing Dan is so much that it could consume him.

He has to try, he _has_ to.

He has to, for this selfish fucking intent to keep Dan tethered to his rotting body and mind. He hates himself then, but _he has to_.

The notion of not being with the man he wants to be with his whole life or whatever’s left of him, chokes him with desperation as Phil makes his way to the shower.

He’s got his plans set, he’s going to take a shower, he’s going to go get a haircut, he’s going to film a video, he’s going to spend time with Dan and he’s going to hope that this will be enough for now, that he’ll somehow take him back as Phil, as the person he could smile at without his eyes rimming red and his lips trembling.

He makes a checklist and goes over it again and again in his head as his feet thump to the shower door, legs bony and trembling, an inch from knocking into each other.

It’s like a fairy tale scenario at this point to have the simple joys in life he once had even though there’s been nothing material in change, nothing outside Phil’s own fucked up mind and Phil’s messed up brain goes more numb the more he works out how to put his life together again but he’s so so scared of how badly he’s been fucking up that he needs to _try,_ just try whatever trying entails.

He opens the hot water and it gushes out as he sheds his clothes almost ripping them off his skin, biting on his lip to _hurry, hurry, hurry_ as if how fast he washes his hair determines how much longer he has with Dan, how much his chances grow and then he’s naked.

He’s naked and bare and the mirror behind him shows the shell of a person in an image he dare not look at.

Phil stands frozen.

The steam in the shower is hot, too hot and he wills himself to fucking move but he just stands there, limbs trapped by something in his own mind as if the water could wash away all of the insecurity, instability inside him.

It hurts so so much.

His whole body does but not where the water burns it but inside.

A deep and throbbing pain in his bones till his legs shake.

He’s trembling all over.

He's trembling and sniffing back sobs that rise out of nowhere till he's falling to his knees with a wail before he can comprehend it, understand any of it.

He sobs into his palm, noting absently how he’s wasting hot water, hating himself slightly more for it but the pile of hatred is so endless now it barely makes a difference.

It’s just a sea of black sloshing inside him and Phil wonders how long it takes to fucking _drown_.

He wants to go already.

He can’t live like this.

He can’t make anyone live with him, _with him like this_.

Phil can’t breath and he’s learnt by now to pull in and let out and repeat till he can catch his breath without passing out but it doesn’t work then and he’s gasping for air. He’s gaping but it's useless and the last thing he wants to inflict on Dan is finding him unconscious in the shower.

Phil finds that the thought does not help to regulate his breathing as he chokes more, unable to suck in any air.

The bathroom tiles blur before him.

Before his vision is completely swallowed in darkness, there are warm arms around him and a chant of _‘breath, breath’_ in his dirty matted hair and on his skeletal face.

Gentle grounding kisses and it’s too late to hide his shame from Dan who’s concerned blurry face grows hazier behind the steam and Phil’s tears.

It’s a losing battle to try and preserve by himself anymore and Phil’s watching his life shatter before him so in a last attempt, like a literal drowning man clutching at a straw, he clutches at Dan’s black shirt, naked shaking and blubbering.

His dignity the last thing on his mind then, because all he’s left with is desperation and pain and he can’t brace himself for what he’s convinced is about to come.

_He can’t do it._

‘Don’t-!’

Phil wretches out the word with every last air molecule left inside it and it scratches on it's way out like it’s made of sandpaper when it leaves his throat, rubbing along all the hurt he’s been turning into scabs, breaking them open and letting them bleed.

‘ _Don’t''_

'don’t leave me-’

He begs.

He sobs latching onto Dan, pleading as if his words could mean anything after how much he’s hurt the person he’s supposed to cherish and care for, after he’s ignored Dan’s own sobs and pleads and begs for all those nights he cried into Phil’s shirt, soaking his back.

_‘Please,please, please Phil you need help.’_

But in his head all Phil was convinced he needed was Dan and he’s let him slip from his fingers and as Dan pulls away Phil’s arms wrap wildly through the air trying to hold on but only a sob catches in his throat when he finds nothing to grip, no Dan, no anchor.

He makes a noise like he’s been slaughtered.

Before he can work himself into a frenzy though he feels big familiar warm palms firmly plant themselves on his shoulders.

**‘Phil.’**

and Dan’s voice breaks through because it’s commanding and firm yet still feels hitched, still ragged, tired and broken.

All of the things Phil doesn’t want to hear so clearly etched in it.

So much pain, and what hurts Phil the most is that _he’s_ the fucking cause.

He wants to disappear from Dan’s life as much as he wants to be a part of it but he wants to, oh he wants to spare him the pain so badly, wants to melt into the drain with the hot water that runs down it, the hot water that runs down _him_ , that scalds his back.

He doesn’t feel the pain, the burn, the heat, doesn’t feel his back glowing bright red and tinge horribly but Dan does, it's been burning him too, a cruel metaphor and Dan closes the tap with a wince and Dan pulls him nearer.

Dan feels for him all that he fails to and he feels too much and Phil sobs because the only pain he can feel is Dan’s.

He doesn’t want it.

_‘Phil.’_

Dan whispers again, gentle as he wraps a towel around his shoulders and cups his cheeks gently.

Dan’s hands are shaking slightly, they’ve been shaking so much these last few months and Phil wishes he could stop time there and then, just live in this moment till eternity because somehow he’s convinced that this is the last he’s feel of this affection and warmth Dan’s so full of and the last time he can look into those worried, frowning eyes as they regard him with a bloody sort of massacred love.

‘Phil. I’m here.’

Dan whispers and if his words were a blanket Phil would wrap them around him and sleep in them but the only thing physical in them is their essence and Dan so Phil drops onto him, inhales him and presses his wet eyes into his neck because beggars can’t be choosers and Phil’s wondering how he’s still allowed to beg.

Maybe he’s not a beggar at all.

He feels more like a thief taking and taking and _taking_.

‘I..i don’t deserve you Dan.’

Phil whimpers and pushes his fingers weakly against Dan’s collar, faking a push, faking a push because he can only lean closer, pull Dan impossibly close, right into himself.

He’s a myriad of contradictions.

He’s an accumulation of fucked up.

 _He’s fucked up._ Dan needs to leave.

‘ ** _I_** deserve you Phil, i love you, I need you and _you_ deserve to not feel like shit anymore.’

Dan holds him tight and cards his long soothing fingers in Phil’s unruly, disgusting hair but Phil can only arch into the touch because he’s needy and selfish and pathetic and because Dan is still here and Dan is holding him like he wants nowhere else to be.

* * *

 

‘Phil, you need help.’

Dan presses his lips onto Phil’s head and Phil simply blinks up at him.

He’s got nothing to say, he’s gone and created this mess and dragged them both into it.

‘Not your fault Phil.’

Dan states firmly, scarily accurate with Phil’s train of thoughts.

Dan can read him, read him just with the tensing of Phil’s shoulders and drooping of his eyes, just with the flinch in his spine.

Just with his mumble of _‘i know’_ along with the words he doesn’t say but Dan can hear with the hitch in his breath and in his silence.

Dan helps him into bed and tucks him in when he’s ready, clings to him as they lay there with no sound but their slowly calming breaths and that is when Phil closes his eyes and clenches his jaw and says it for the first time.

Says it and means it.

‘I want to get help Dan.’

It feels like a step in the right direction for once, feels like a mark on the checklist and even though Phil knows this is just the beginning of finding himself again he wants to try.

Try for himself and the man who knows nothing but to hold till his arms can’t hold any longer, who wraps himself like a bandage on Phil’s bleeding metaphorical cuts even if he himself ends up soaked in red.

He wants to try for them, wants to try and find his way again.

* * *

 

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, i'm back and reposting all my old fics gradually. Here's the first one i got a request for :) My new tumblr is @lostinhireath come say hi :p <3


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